Roofing equipment spends its working life in the worst possible place to keep an eye on it - on a roof, hauled up at dawn and down at dusk, with the rest of the kit split between trucks, trailers, and whatever stayed on site under a tarp. Add seasonal crews, hot works gear with real safety stakes, and harnesses that the law expects you to inspect and prove you inspected, and a roofing company has more reasons to track equipment than almost any trade its size.
What you will learn
- What roofing work does to equipment
- Fall protection comes first
- The roofing register
- Crews, trucks, and checkouts
- The first month
- Running it in AMPthilly
- FAQ
What roofing work does to equipment
Roofing combines a few loss multipliers that office-based asset registers never have to survive:
- Gear stays on site overnight. Tear-off runs long, and equipment under a tarp on a half-finished roof belongs to nobody until someone records that it belongs to the job.
- Crews scale with the season. Spring and summer bring extra hands who do not know which compressor is whose, and autumn lay-offs walk out with whatever was “theirs”.
- Everything travels vertically. Tools hauled to a roof come down in whatever order the day ends, into whichever truck is closest.
- The work destroys labels and memories alike. Heat, bitumen, granule dust, and weather are hard on markings - and a nail gun with no readable ID is anyone’s nail gun.
- Sideline seasons multiply the kit. Plenty of roofing firms run snow removal in winter, which means a second seasonal inventory in the same yard and trucks.
Fall protection comes first
Harnesses, lanyards, ropes, and anchors are the one category where tracking is not optional housekeeping - it is the difference between a defensible safety system and a rack of unknowns.
- Every item gets its own identity. Not “six harnesses” - six records, each with purchase date, first-use date, and inspection history.
- Two layers of inspection, both recorded. Pre-use checks by the wearer, plus periodic inspections by a competent person, with the record and certificate kept on the item.
- Withdrawal is an event, not a disappearance. A harness that fails inspection or arrests a fall is retired on the record, so it cannot quietly migrate back into a truck.
- Assignment closes the loop. When each harness is checked out to a named roofer, “whose harness failed” and “who has the harness that is due” stop being research projects.
The roofing register
| Category | Examples | How to track |
|---|---|---|
| Fall protection | Harnesses, lanyards, ropes, anchors | Per item, with inspection dates and history |
| Power and air | Nail guns, compressors, hoses, generators | Per item with serials; hoses by kit |
| Access | Ladders, ladder hoists, scaffolding, edge protection | Per item or per set |
| Hot works | Kettles, torches, regulators | Per item, with condition notes |
| Metal work | Brakes, benders, seamers | Per item - low volume, high value |
| Vehicles and machines | Trucks, trailers, UTVs on large jobs | Per item with documents attached |
| Consumables | Fasteners, membrane, blades, granules | Stock levels, not serial numbers |
The dividing line is the same as in any trade: if it moves between jobs or hurts to replace, it is an asset; if you buy it by the box, it is stock.
Crews, trucks, and checkouts
- The truck kit is one checkout to the crew lead. When crews reshuffle in spring, the kit transfers with a five-minute scan-through that doubles as an inventory count.
- Jobs own what stays on site. The kettle and the hoist assigned to the Orchard Road job are visible on the register as exactly that - and when the job closes, its open-assignment list is the load-out checklist.
- Shared big-ticket items - the second compressor, the metal brake - are checked out per job and returned, so two crews stop discovering on the same morning that they both planned around it.
- Every handover is a scan. A phone camera on the QR label moves the asset to the new crew in seconds, from the tailgate, with gloves on.
Tip: photograph the serial plate when you label each item. If a truck or site box is broken into, the police report and the insurance claim both want serial numbers - and the photo sitting on the asset record is where you will actually find them.
The first month
- Start with fall protection. It is the smallest category with the highest stakes - label it, record inspection dates, and assign each item to a roofer.
- Do a one-day asset inventory of the yard and one truck. Serials, photos, labels as you go.
- Create your owners - crews, trucks, active jobs - before you worry about completeness.
- Check everything out to where it is today, even if today’s truth is “most of it is on a roof in the next town”.
- Add the weekly ten-minute review: what is overdue, what is due for inspection, what is still assigned to a job that finished.
Running it in AMPthilly
AMPthilly gives each harness, nail gun, and kettle its own record - serial, photos, purchase details, and attached documents such as inspection certificates - and lets you check kit out to a crew member or a location with a due date; an active job is just another location in the register. Printable QR labels come in your choice of sizes for sticker sheets or label printers, and scanning one with an ordinary phone camera opens the asset in the browser with no app install - check it in or out, see who holds it, or report damage with a photo from the roof. Every checkout, return, transfer, and status change is kept in the audit history, which is exactly the trail an inspection or insurance claim asks for. The free plan covers 3 users and 25 assets with no credit card - enough to put your entire fall protection inventory under control this week. Details are on the pricing page.
FAQ
How do roofing contractors keep track of tools and equipment? Assign everything to a crew, truck, or job; label every item with a durable QR code; scan at handovers; review the overdue list weekly.
How should harness and fall protection inspections be recorded? Individual records per item, pre-use checks plus recorded periodic inspections, certificates attached, and failed items retired on the record.
What equipment should a roofing company track? Fall protection, nail guns, compressors, ladders and hoists, kettles and torches, brakes, generators, and vehicles. Fasteners and membrane are stock.
Are QR labels durable enough for roofing equipment? Heavy-duty laminated labels placed away from heat and abrasion hold up well, and a destroyed label is reprinted in minutes.
How do you stop losing gear between roofing jobs? Record overnight gear - the tarped kettle, the hoist - against the job it sits on, and run the final load-out from that list.
The takeaway
Roofing gear gets lost because it lives on roofs, in trucks, and in two seasonal inventories at once - and because the highest-stakes category, fall protection, demands proof, not memory. Put every item on the register under exactly one owner, make handovers a scan, keep inspection history on the item, and treat each job’s open assignments as the load-out checklist. Do that with any system and the losses stop being a line item; do it with AMPthilly and the free plan gets you started today.